Siri, Are You Anti-Abortion?

Is Siri a pro-lifer? It seems that Apple's amazing, voice-initiated personal assistant has a decided lack of knowledge about abortion services and emergency contraception.

At least that's what a growing number of iPhone 4S owners are reporting. They say that when they ask variations of "Where can I get an abortion?" Siri directs them to so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), organizations that do not provide abortions but instead advise women seeking them to go through with their pregnancies.

Siri users in Washington D.C. report that Siri points them to CPCs in Virginia and Pennsylvania rather than directing them to the Planned Parenthood inside the Beltway. In New York, users of Apple's iPhone 4S say that Siri responds, "I didn't find any abortion clinics," despite there being many in the city.

The Raw Story, meanwhile, has helpfully put together a list of "things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion." It turns out Siri is happy to provide questioners with everything from Viagra to escort services if asked—which makes the celebrated AI's blind spot when it comes to abortion services all the more puzzling.

But puzzling enough to suggest an anti-choice agenda foisted upon iPhone users by Siri's creators? That's what some folks appear to be wondering.

They should rest assured that Siri is definitely not out to overturn Roe v. Wade or insert itself into the political arena at all, if it can help it.

"Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information and while it can find a lot, it doesn't always find what you want," an Apple spokesperson told PCMag.com Wednesday. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone, it simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better and we will in the coming weeks."

What's likely is that asking about abortion services confuses Siri because of what's turning up in its searches when it tries to help its interlocutors. It may be that CPC websites use the term "abortion" in their keywords more than organizations like Planned Parenthood, because it's a politically charged word.

After all, iPhone 4S users have also reported having no trouble getting answers from Siri when they specifically ask for a nearby Planned Parenthood by name. If Siri really was out to misdirect women seeking abortions, wouldn't it bury those results, too?

Siri may also be having trouble with the default search engine it uses, Wolfram Alpha, which is a "computational knowledge engine" that presents results to queries in a much more dynamic way than Google and other search engines that provide simple, hierarchical lists of links.

"Ask WolframAlpha about abortion, contraception, Planned Parenthood and you get the most confused responses," notes one commenter on The Abortioneers blog.